


the call you heed

by impossibletruths



Series: the beautiful things the heavens carry [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M, First Meetings, meet awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 17:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13104966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: She's got a good feeling about the man, regardless of his interpersonal skills, and that's what really matters. [part of the Critical Role Star Wars AU]





	the call you heed

**Author's Note:**

> written for [@crlmsonriot](http://www.crlmsonriot.tumblr.com). title from "leeward side" by josh pyke. set before We're On The Road To Nowhere.

“Excuse me,” she asks, because he looks like a spacer and she has a  _good_  feeling about this one and, well, she’s really kind of desperate. “Um, is that your ship?”

“What.”

“I–– The ship.” She’s fairly certain it must be his, or that he at least  _works_  on it, given the way he’s sort of leaning against one of the support struts of the landing gear with all the ease of a well-fed tooka. “Is it yours?”

He stares at her blankly for a moment––and he’s got funny eyes, she notices, although it’s probably impolite to think of them as  _funny_ ; lots of species have perfectly normal eyes that only seem odd to her because she’s from Zephra, and–– Well, anyway.

She likes them, though. Even if they’re two different colors.

“What gave it away?” he asks, flat and dry as the salt seas back home.

“Well, you were sitting here and I thought maybe–– Oh. Oh, you’re joking.”

He blinks a couple of times, and then says, more slowly. “Yeah. Sure.”

And now he thinks she’s an idiot. She sighs. If this is how her first stop is going, she can’t imagine the rest of this trip is going to go well. If it goes at all.

“Sorry,” she says, backtracking, trying to remember all the advice Dad had offered up as her ship left atmo. “Um, I’m Keyleth. I’m looking for transport. So I was wondering… y’know.” She starts to offer her hand, then thinks better of it because some species don’t like touching, but he looks human enough so––

She settles on reaching out. He takes it gingerly and shakes, once. His hands are warm, and rough with calluses. “Kash,” he says. “Well, Brother Kashaw Vesh, but everyone calls me Kash.”

“Oh,” she says brightly. “Are you a priest?”

He snorts, crossing his arms. “Do I look like a priest?”

Not really, no, not in his grease-stained shirt and threadbare jacket and scuffed-up boots and pants that have Force-knows-what on them. He scowls a little. She shrugs.

“But it is your ship?”

“Yeah, it’s my ship.”

“Are you taking passengers?”

He frowns. He seems to do that a lot. She stares firmly back, and wonders if maybe she should have tried her luck with the boisterous scholar trying to talk her way onto a trade expedition three berths down.

“Depends,” Kash says finally, slowly, like he might  _maybe_  be considering it. Keyleth perks up. “It’s not cheap.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she says, relieved it’s not something more pressing. “Would, um. Would five thousand creds cover it?”

His eyes go wide and she wonders if that’s maybe too high, if people don’t walk around with that much money, but he’s already reaching a hand out to grab hers, shaking it.

“Yep, great. Done.”

“Great,” she says, sort of shaking his hand in return and not certain when to stop. He clears his throat. She tugs her hand back.

For a long, rather awkward moment they stare at each other.

“So,” he says, finally, a little stilted. “Where are you going?”

“Um,” she replies, in that same sort of stilted way. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t. Know.”

“It’s, um. Maybe Corellia?”

His eyes narrow. “Are you in trouble? You steal all that cash?”

“What? No. It’s mine. Well, it’s the Ashari’s, really, but I’m allowed to use it, since I’m going to be headmaster next–– I mean, if I find what I’m looking for and bring it back, so––“

“Headmaster, what’s that? Some sort of royalty?”

“Not… really? It’s, um. It’s complicated. But no.”

“Sounds like royalty to me,” he says dubiously, and she shrugs a little.

“I–– Maybe? It’s really not important. Um, no one is supposed to know anyway.”

“Oh, really,” he says, his voice doing that flat-dry thing again. His eyebrow cocks upwards. “Well you’re doing a great job of keeping a lid on it.”

Keyleth huffs. “You’re really bad at talking to people,” she tells him. He smiles at that, properly and full, and he looks  _nice_  when he does it, which is kind of unfair.

“Yeah,” he agrees, practically amiable. “I get that a lot. You’re not much better.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, and can’t think of a good comeback. “That’s pretty true.”

He shakes his head, but she gets the sense that it’s not a bad thing. More amused, maybe.

“So, Corellia?” he says, like they’ve settled on it, and the vertigo shift of anxiety washes over her, rises hot-heavy in her throat and drops deep in her stomach, and she leans a little more fully upon her staff.

The galaxy is big, it is so impossibly big, and Corellia is far, far away from this sheltered corner of the Rim, from everything she knows. Even with the Force at her side, she doesn’t know what lies ahead. But she has to start, has to put one foot in front of the other, has to make this effort because the alternative is to turn tail and slink home and that’s no option. She’s already sent her father’s guards packing. If she can’t do this, what is the point of going home at all, or leading her people, or guarding the scraps of knowledge they saved from the Empire’s purge?

What, she thinks, half-bitter and half-fierce, would her mother say?

She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. “Yeah,” she decides with a surety she doesn’t quite feel. “Corellia.”

He eyes her, and she does not know what he is thinking at all, and she tries not to wonder too much. She wants to reach out, to brush across his thoughts and learn, but that is dangerous out here, where the world is cruel to Force users. She knows what happened to the Jedi, and the Sages of Baran Do, and the Nightsisters, and the Gnomes, and the rest. The wide-waiting galaxy is a dim place for those who seek answers and balance and hope.

But there is a spark, and it takes such a little breath to fan it to a flame. Fire is catching. Hope must be too, she thinks. Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so hard.

“Alright,” he says finally, and she does not mean to reach out but she does anyways, and there is a light to him that sits at odds with his dourness. He burns life-bright. “Corellia it is then,” he says, and she pulls back into herself.

“Okay,” she says, more to herself than anything. She can do this. It’s fine. “Corellia. Yeah.”

He’s still eyeing her, like he’s trying to answer a question she doesn’t know, but he just shrugs and turns heel, boots loud on the entrance ramp. She hesitates at the base––it is one little step, and a whole new path––and he glances back over his shoulder.

“Well?” he asks, almost rude, and she shakes herself. “You coming or what, Princess?”

“I’m coming,” she says to him, and takes that step, and feels the galaxy shift around her, shifting like cracked glass, shatterpoints dispersing and reforming, and she’s not quite sure what it means but she thinks, she thinks maybe this is good. “I’m coming,” she echoes more quietly, to herself or the Force or the future; she’s not sure. Then she is up the ramp, and it hisses closed behind her. She breathes.

“Make yourself at home,” says Kash as he stomps towards what she assumes is the cockpit. “And don’t go poking around.”

She thinks maybe those things are sort of paradoxical, but he’s already down the low-ceilinged hall so she picks up her pace and trails him into what is, indeed, the cockpit. It’s narrow like the rest of the ship, and looks like it’s seen better days, but it’s clean at least, and the seats are only peeling a little. He slumps in one chair and begins the start-up sequence. Keyleth sits next to him, watching.

“You just gonna stare at me the whole time?”

“I want to learn.”

He twists towards her. “You ever flown before?”

“Yes,” she says, defensive at disbelief in his voice. “I got here.”

“Great,” he mutters, going back to the console, and a moment later the ship hums to life around them, and then they’re in the air, burning through atmo and emerging into the cold-silent vacuum of space. Keyleth shivers as the heat bleeds away, then jumps when something next to her dings.

“Brace yourself,” Kash says shortly, and then he tugs something on the dashboard and the stars streak into lines and the whole world goes blue-silver-white. Keyleth yelps.

“It’s just hyperspace,” he mutters, flipping a handful of switches, and then he twists around in his seat to watch her with those mismatched eyes. She ignores him, still staring out the viewport in awe.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathes. He glances outside.

“I guess.”

It  _is_ , but Kash doesn’t seem the kind of person to admire the beauty of the world around him, so Keyleth doesn’t say anything more.

Next to her, he huffs. “Alright, I’ll bite.”

“What?”

“What are you looking for?”

“Oh,” she says distractedly. “Old Jedi stuff.”

“You what.”

“Well, and other things. Ashari knowledge that got lost with the Purge. But mostly the Jedi stuff.”

“That’s treason.”

She looks up at him, finally, at the line between his brows and the sharp line of his mouth and his mismatched eyes. He roils with a strange mix of disapproval-anxiety-curiosity-hope. She frowns right back at him.

“The Empire,” she says firmly, “can go fuck itself.”

He gawks. “You can’t just say that.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want to get yourself killed? What if I was an Imp?”

“You’re not,” she says, dismissive. His eyes narrow.

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. You don’t feel like an Imperial.”

“Are you––“ Suddenly he goes dark and cold at her side, and she starts. “Don’t read my thoughts.”

“I’m not,” she replies, honest. “It’s just a feeling. How–– How did you do that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he tells her. “I know better than to go around using the Force, though.”

“Are you a Jedi?”

“Are  _you_?”

For a moment, they stare at each other in the cramped cockpit, tension caught between them so taut it feels like the air itself could snap. Then Keyleth sighs.

“No,” she says. “No, just an Ashari. We have a, uh. An affinity. You?”

“I’m no Jedi,” he snorts. “It’s all bullshit old magic, anyway.”

“The Force is real––“ she begins, and he waves her away.

“Sure the Force is real, but the Jedi stuff is all crap. Why would they be gone if they weren’t a bunch of hacks.”

“Well what are you, then?” she demands, a little affronted on the Jedi’s behalf. He won’t meet her eyes.

“Just an unlucky bastard. I, uh. Have this weird thing. It’s really complicated. And it sucks, a lot.”

“Okay,” she says, fight bleeding away. She knows better than to press. “But you’re not an Imp.”

“Nah,” he replies. “No time for it.”

“What are you, then?”

“Medic,” he shrugs. “Mercenary, sometimes. Chauffer, apparently.”

He sounds a little irritated about it. Though, truth be told, he sounds a little irritated about most things. She furrows her brow. “You said you were taking passengers.”

“You offered five thousand credits.”

That’s true, she did. She doesn’t know what to say to that. For a moment, the cockpit echoes with the buzz of the instruments and the hum of the engines and the quiet twin rhythm of their breathing.

Kash stands suddenly. “There’s a spare bunk down the hall to the left,” he says, blunt, because that seems to be his default, when he’s not being irritated, and–– “It’s about twelve hours to Corellia. You should sleep.”

“Right,” she says, not sure what else to say. “Okay.”

He hovers. She thinks maybe he wants to say something else, but instead he just sort of sighs and leaves. She leans back in her chair and stares at the hyperspace lines until she they are printed against her eyelids, and every time she blinks the whole world flattens and streaks past.

She folds her legs beneath her, rolls out her neck. Anxiety churns in her stomach, rises like the tides of Vesrah. She closes her eyes, steadies her breathing, reaches out. The Force is familiar and bright as an old friend, and churning-dangerous as a storm, and she lets it wash over her, burning-cold and chilling-hot and a thousand other things that cannot be put into words. She turns herself into hyperspace lines as she stretches out. The ship is cold around her, except for the warm-bright spot of Kash, somewhere in the belly of the craft, thoughts troubled and churning. She brushes past them as she stretches further, leaves him smooth-straight in her wake like a magnet over iron, and catches the slightest echo of awe-surprise-confusion as she passes. Then she streaks past stars faster than even light, and marvels at the vastness of the galaxy, and how it is not-empty at all.

Somewhere out there, she half-thinks among her meditation, are answers enough to light the galaxy anew. Somehow, she will find them.

It is an impossible task. It is simple as stepping out her front door. Someway, it will get done.

Then she breathes again, and even that thought drifts away, and she is nothing but a floating mote among an infinity of starlight and motion and life, and the universe flows through her.

Beeping draws her out of her meditation.

It sounds distant but approaches quickly. Or, no, it is the other way around: she moves towards it, her drifting consciousness streaking through infinity back to the redheaded spark of a woman folded in the copilot seat of an old ship that is quickly approaching its destination.

She surfaces like a drowning woman, gasping back into her body, half-remembered images of shadows and faces and an ugly behemoth of a ship fading away as she stares over the panel of blinking lights, and the red one just to her left that is flashing insistently. She looks at it, hand reached out to press it, when––

“What are you doing? Did your magic mumbo jumbo teach you how to fly a spaceship? Don’t touch that.”

Kash slides into the seat next to her, palming a few buttons and pulling back on the yoke, and with a jolt somewhere behind her navel the lines around them flash back to points of light and they drop out of hyperspace, the shadow of a planet rotating slowly above them. Keyleth stares up at it in amazement.

“Welcome to Corellia, Princess.”

The spacelanes are busy as they move towards the planet, Kash submitting clearance codes that will allow them to land in Coronet City.

The spaceport alone could be its own settlement. Kash sets them down and begins the cooldown sequence. Keyleth breathes, suddenly dizzy with the reality of it. This is it. She’s starting her journey. Properly.

“C’mon, then,” he says, and she follows him out of the cockpit on legs that only shake a little. Her fingers find the edge of her cloak, worrying the rough fabric. The ramp hisses down, and the outside air smells like smoke and metal and grease and a hundred thousand living beings. She breathes it in, awed by the thrumming  _life_  around her. She’s never seen so many beings in one place.

Kash weaves expertly through the crowded floor of the hanger bay, and she trails after him, tripping over her own feet until they arrive at the entrance, nothing but a few local guards between her and a city easily ten times the size of Zephra. She swallows, staring up at the buildings that reach high enough to scrape against the sky.

It takes her a long moment to realize Kash is staring at her expectantly, hand outstretched and, oh. Right. Payment.

“Uh,” she says intelligibly, fishing through her bag for a credit chip. She presses it into his open palm.

“Thank you,” she says. His fist closes around it. “Um, really. Thanks, Kash.”

“Sure thing, Princess,” he says, and his voice lacks its customary bite. “You know where you’re going?” he asks, and she thinks that could  _almost_  be concern in his voice. It’s surprisingly touching.

“Um,” she says, and she’s about to make something up when she sees, suddenly, crystal clear in her mind’s eye, a small man in a deep purple vest moving through a crowded market, and she knows where she needs to go. “Yes,” she says, certain. “I do.”

“Okay. Uh, well.” He seems as thrown by her certainty as she is; he hovers for a moment, just staring at her. “Good luck.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“You ever need help, maybe don’t just ask the first handsome guy you see.”

“Oh, okay.”

He’s still staring at her, though, and she’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out, one hand wrapping around her waist, and tugs her in close. His other hand is warm and callused against her cheek. His lips are surprisingly gentle. Heat flashes through her, something that is gentler than embarrassment and not-unpleasant. Then it’s over, and she almost wishes it wasn’t.

“See you around,” he says, gruff, and before she can remember how to form words he turns tail and strides back into the teeming crowd of the spaceport, disappearing among the press of bodies. Keyleth touches her fingertips to her lips, still tingling, staring at the place where he has vanished.

She  _really_  doesn’t get men, she decides.

Then she shoulders her bag, and grips her staff tighter, and squares her shoulder, and steps out of the spaceport and towards the beckoning beacon of the future.


End file.
